


Circles

by dragonofdispair



Series: Roads [27]
Category: Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Pranks and Practical Jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-01
Updated: 2008-05-01
Packaged: 2018-02-26 18:25:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2661944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>History repeats itself. Watch long enough and you'll see the patterns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Circles

It started relatively small. The next time Scorponok went to harass Cliffjumper, Cliffjumper sprayed him with silly string. Prime might have been momentarily relieved that the violent orange mini-bot had found a different way of expressing his annoyance, but Ratchet was not happy at all at having to clean the stuff off and out of the drone.

The next day, Cliffjumper (who like the rest of the Autobots on Earth recharged in vehicle mode) woke up to find his back bumper bungee cord-ed to a lamp post on base. What wouldn't have been even an annoyance to a normal car with a human driver, was humiliating for the Porsche, unable to move, transform, or release himself. The humans who'd found him had thought it funny, but Cliffjumper had not.

Then Air Raid dumped a gallon of red paint on the drone during a training exercise. Ratchet had to clean that one up too. During the next exercise, Air Raid couldn't concentrate (not that, one of the pilots laughed, you could tell the difference in his flying) because he kept hearing an annoying buzzing sound coming from somewhere in his interior. A miniature sound player with a recording of a mosquito had been attached to the inside of one of his armor panels. The noise was a low enough volume and placed that, while it seemed overwhelming while in his F-35 form, when he transformed it was far enough from his audios that it was nearly silent. Ratchet had not been amused.

Next, Cliffjumper and Air Raid worked together to set up an elaborate paint and glue and glitter trap hidden in the desert at the entrance of Scorponok's burrow. Apparently they forgot that Scorponok traveled under the desert floor more than he did over it. Ironhide had been fragged off good when he tripped it over a week later. Ratchet's continued streak of non-amusement continued.

That was about the time they both figured out that this was going to be a lot harder than they'd thought. Air Raid, specifically was getting frustrated. He hadn't realized how much of his previous pranking campaigns relied on the 'bot in question having sleeping quarters to put disgusting things in, or doors to those quarters to booby trap, or wash racks to reprogram, or lockers full of personal belongings to put various surprises in, or -- Primus! Personal belongings to mess with in the first place. None of which the Autobots really had here on Earth.

Sure they had free run of this base, and a piece of it set up as an Autobot medical area, but no actual quarters. Air Raid and Fireflight may have generally chosen to recharge with the humans' jets because it was safer and more comfortable, but the car-bots recharged anywhere they thought they wouldn't be bothered for the night -- in the driveways at "their" humans' houses, quiet corners of the base, the nearby desert, truck stops.

Cliffjumper was frustrated too, but mostly because Air Raid was frustrated. He wasn't an experienced prankster and didn't care as much about how uninspired simple silly string and paint were.

Both later found they had some insipid little piece of human technology with speakers glued to the inside of their passenger compartments, blaring out Disney show tunes. The kicker was that somehow these things managed to stay hidden from them until they were both two hours into an eight hour punishment patrol and therefore unable to ask anyone to help them remove the annoying pieces of slag. By the end of the six hours Cliffjumper would have paid anything to be able to erase the words to "Girl Worth Fighting For" from his memory, and Air Raid was ready to maim the human who'd first conceived of "Yo Ho A Pirate's Life for Me".

Cliffjumper then managed to recruit some humans in to a game of paint ball, with Scorponok as the target. And Air Raid managed to peg the drone with a handful of eggs. A mech sized handful. He still thought that was uninspired, but felt it would more than make up for it in being disgusting. Very disgusting, and Ratchet had to help clean the drone off.

Speaking of disgusting -- it took them weeks to find the potatoes rotting in their circuitry. Where Scorponok got the potatoes was the subject of much speculation among the humans. Various guesses were put forth, from "He stole them from the base kitchens" to "they fell off the back of a cargo truck on the high way" and "He's secretly growing them somewhere in the desert" ("Man, why the fuck would a mechanical scorpion be secretly growing potatoes?" "I dunno. Maybe scorpions like french fries too?" "You're whacked.") and got increasingly more ridiculous from there.

Ratchet was growing more and more livid.

And the two conspirators were finding it more and more difficult to come up with ways of catching Scorponok in their pranks without catching anyone else. The incident with Ironhide (and the six hours of Disney music while they were being punished for catching Ironhide) had made them decide against setting any more traps. And catching him in recharge wasn't working -- the critter was always either with Prime or in his burrow. Sure when he was with Prime, he was out in the open, but if something happened and they caught Prime in it, their lives would pretty much be over. So far Optimus had ignored the obvious prank war, saying that it was better if they worked out their disagreement like this rather than shooting each other (that comment was the only reason Ratchet hadn't maimed anyone yet), but that would end if he got caught in one.

Finally they bribed a pair of humans (with what, neither they nor the humans ever admitted to) to sneak up on him while he recharged on Prime's fifth wheel and put a just under hundred glittery Barbie stickers and close to thirty obnoxious bumper stickers on him. The soldiers found the slogans "CAUTION! I speed up to run over small animals" and "Honk if you've never seen an Uzi fired from a car window" amusing. But everyone's favorite, including Ironhide's, was "Is There Life After Death? TOUCH MY TRUCK AND FIND OUT" which had been placed on Scorponok's right claw-cannon. Ironhide was even in favor of making that the bug's official slogan, which did not exactly earn him any brownie points from Optimus Prime. The Barbie stickers eventually soaked off, but the bumper stickers had to be sandblasted.

How Scorponok managed to put twenty squeaky toys in each of their ankle joints in broad daylight without being noticed was anyone's guess. And since, after sandblasting the stickers off, Ratchet had shouted for all to hear that the next 'bot that came to him to have the results of some prank removed was going to find himself missing a few non-essential components -- transformation cogs, for example -- the two of them spent the better part of two days with squeaky ankles before Ratchet decided the noise was more annoying than fixing them would be.

Ironhide thought it was funny. Of course he did. The two conspirators were learning something he'd known since his early vorns of service in Prime's unit.

Ratchet may have been merciful enough to pull the squeaky toys out of those two slaggers' ankles, but he was still fit to be tied. More than ready to maim. So it was perhaps fortunate for Scorponok that he managed to dodge Cliffjumper's next creative application of paint. But only barely. And only because a human had seen what was about to happen and given the Porsche away by snickering.

Too bad for Cliffjumper that, despite paranoid precautions that would make Red Alert believe he was crazy, he still wasn't able to keep the bug from sneaking up on him while he recharged...

That morning, Ironhide was hanging around Ratchet as the latter ranted about how the Autobot unit was turning into a human preschool classroom and how the medic was being turned into a glorified babysitter and all of them were over forty vorns old and should have out grown such juvenileness a long, long time ago and they were all a bunch of stupid sparklings who were doing this just to annoy him.

The first they heard about the latest development of the prank war was Cliffjumper yelling, "I'm gonna kill the sorry little fragger for this!" Apparently whatever Scorponok had done this time had broken through whatever self control the mini-bot had been using to prank the drone rather than shoot him.

Ratchet was doing an admirable job of not exploding at the thought of having to help clean up another prank. Mostly that involved focusing really, really hard on tinkering with his medical tool array. Thus he was facing away from the orange 'bot when he came stomping into the corner of the Air Force base that had been assigned to the Autobots for use as a "medical area" snarling "Where the frag is it?"

He continued focusing on his tinkering, convinced he did not want to know. Dimly he heard Ironhide say, in a strangely strangled sounding tone, "Bug left with Prime early this morning." Then, after just a tick, Ironhide nearly collapsed with laughter and Ratchet decided he should probably turn around and see what he was going to have to clean up this time.

And had to reset his optics just to make sure he really was seeing what he thought he was seeing. Then he laughed too.

"Shut up. It's not funny."

Cliffjumper was no longer a solid orange 'bot. Instead, he was a sort of dark maroon with slight yellow accents. It was very neatly and professionally done too, and Ratchet wondered how the frag a scorpion-bot with no proper hands had managed it.

But that wasn't even the funniest part. The real funny part was the bright turquoise Decepticon symbol painted crisply on one of Cliffjumper's chest plates. That had to have taken some skill -- especially considering it would have been placed on him while he was in alt mode. Fuming and bristling, Cliffjumper made a fairly impressive (if ridiculously colored) Decepticon.

It did not take long at all for the formerly orange mini-bot to get completely fed up with them and stomp off, hoping he could find Air Raid to help him. Unfortunately for him, Air Raid and Fireflight had been sent off late last night for a surprise combat drill two hours before sunrise at a Navy base that currently had carrier parked nearby ("nearby" defined as "a twenty minute flight out to sea"). After it they were to help train the carrier's pilots and so weren't to be back for a while.

As what was apparently just supposed to be an added insult, Cliffjumper's ankle squeaked as he stomped off.

It took the two 'bots a long time to manage to quiet their laughter, because occasionally one would snicker and set them both off again. Humans would occasionally stop and stare at the two hysterical mechs with the sort of wide-eyed surprise and/or bemusement they displayed whenever the Autobots did something either too human or too alien to fit into their personal world views.

Then, after they both managed to go a couple of breems without setting each other off again, Ratchet sat up and looked at Ironhide, still laying on his back with a calm, thoughtful look rarely seen his face.

"What's on your CPU?"

Ironhide smiled a bit and his optics refocused from looking-at-nothing to looking up at Ratchet. "Just remembering."

Remembering... pranks... 'bots waking up painted ridiculous colors... "About Jazz?"

"Yeah...and wondering how long it'll take those two fraggers to learn ya can't win a prank war against an infiltrator."

"Oh, Primus!" Ratchet knew exactly what the weapon specialist was referring to, "Hopefully not as long as it took Jazz to teach you. I don't think my sanity algorithms could take that again."

"Hey!" Ironhide say up so the two mechs were facing each other, "In ma defense, I was only a couple vorns old -- a sparkling by any definition."

"And how many times did you wake up painted yellow?"

"Not nearly as many times as I found 'Hi my name is Ironhide and I'm a masochist -- Please kick me' written on ma aft. You would not believe how many mechs actually did kick me." Neither the yellow paint jobs nor the kicks in the aft had been funny at the time. But time, distance, friendship and death did strange things to one's perception. Looking back now, Ironhide felt only fondness, and grief.

"Oh...I'd believe you. I was one of them remember?"

"Yeah, I remember...still haven't gotten you back for it -- I remember that too."

The words might have promised eventual retribution, but Ironhide's tone was still sort of a lazy, mournful drawl that meant he was more than half buried in memories rather than contemplating anything close to the present. So Ratchet's "And you won't ever, if you know what's good for you," didn't hold any of the threat it would have otherwise.

Whatever Ironhide might have said to that was lost however, as they heard Cliffjumper's shrieking upon finding out about the flyers' absence from the base. Then more shrieking mixed with human laughter as he discovered that the two mechs weren't the only sentients able to appreciate his new paint job in the way it had been intended. Both Ratchet and Ironhide snickered quietly.

Scorponok, Ratchet thought, had been very, very smart to be nowhere in the vicinity when his victim woke up, the way most pranksters couldn't resist being. Though he didn't doubt the assassin would find some way to get his claws on some of the security footage later.

Jazz would have probably gotten along great with Scorponok.

 

  
fini


End file.
